


Two Short Stories About Cuddling

by thingswithwings



Category: MythBusters RPF
Genre: Cuddling, Gen, Hugs, M/M, Sickfic, cuddling for warmth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-17
Updated: 2009-11-17
Packaged: 2017-10-24 01:02:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/257112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thingswithwings/pseuds/thingswithwings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>written for toft, who was feeling down and requested some cuddling.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two Short Stories About Cuddling

**1.** Adam complains all the time. When he burns himself with welding slag (because he didn't bother to pull his gloves up his wrists), when he eats something that didn't agree with him (because he never pays attention to nutrition), when he stubs his toe or accidentally glues himself to things or hits himself in the face with a robot arm because he never thinks to get out of the way before pressing the big red button, he complains. He always seems to be coming down with a cold, or just getting over the flu, and doesn't hesitate to tell everyone in the shop all about it in great, graphic detail.

Jamie mostly tunes it out.

The funny thing is, Adam does too. He'll jump around and wail for a while, or claim to be utterly miserable with his latest illness, but even when he's covered in burns and coughing up a lung he's all manic energy and good cheer, like it's not in him to wallow. Or like he forgets that he's in pain.

Jamie likes that about him.

"I'm serious, I'm going home, I am way too sick to work," Adam says, at eleven pm, after he's been in the shop working for fifteen hours straight.

"Okay," Jamie says. He keeps stapling cotton batting onto the wooden pillars that Adam made that afternoon.

"You're going to have to finish that on your own, is what I'm saying. It has to be done before we leave for Alameda tomorrow morning."

"Yup." The staple gun goes _thunk, thunk, thunk,_ and that's sixteen down, three hundred and eighty-four to go.

Adam sighs, so Jamie turns around to look at him.

"You're not gonna be pissed at me tomorrow if I leave you to do all this work tonight?"

Jamie thinks about this. "I'm good," he says, after a while. The sound of the staple gun and the feel of the cotton is nice, just now, and it wouldn't be a bad thing for the shop to be a little quieter. "Go home and get some sleep. Drink some fluids."

Adam laughs. Adam will laugh at anything, which is actually really annoying. "Okay, mom. Thanks." He reaches out and pats Jamie on the shoulder.

For some reason, maybe because Adam really does sound pretty sick, maybe because it's late and the camera guys went for coffee and donuts, Jamie thinks to reach up to clasp Adam's shoulder while Adam still clasps his, so that their arms are wound together. Adam's face brightens at that, just like it brightens when he finds a cookie in the kitchen or a new blade in his worn-out piece of crap circular saw. So Jamie steps forward and gives him a hug, warm and firm. He has the staple gun in one hand and a fistful of cotton in the other, so he sort of awkwardly clasps Adam's shoulderblades with his wrists. Adam's skin is hot. He might have a fever.

"Jamie?" Adam asks, from somewhere near Jamie's neck.

Jamie lets him go. "Yeah?"

"Did you - why would you - "

"Go home," Jamie says, "you sound like crap. Take some vitamin C, for god's sake. Don't stay up all night working on that antique fluoroscope again."

"Yeah, okay," Adam says. "Sure." He smiles, like he's not certain for once of what to say. It's a good look on him. Then he sneezes, and gets snot all over his face. Jamie winces and points him to the kleenex box on a nearby shelf.

"Thanks," Adam chokes out, mopping off his face and blowing his nose loudly. Jamie doesn't know how anyone could make that much noise with just their nostrils and air and snot.

"Anytime," he shrugs.

Adam turns to leave, and Jamie turns back to the giant pile of cotton batting and the forest of wooden pillars. Three hundred and eighty-three, he thinks, then: three hundred and eighty-two, then: three hundred and eighty-one.

-

-

 **2.** Anything where Jamie's embarrassed plays great on tv, and anything where Adam cheerfully humiliates himself by taking off his shirt also plays great on tv, so when the webmaster passes along the cuddling myth that the fans sent in, Adam is all for it.

Jamie, surprisingly, doesn't dismiss it out of hand. "You know, I've always wondered about that," he says. "Because you're combining body heat, but you're also adding, uh, air space. So the heat will actually depend on . . . "

"You'll seriously do this?" Adam interrupts, impatient and kind of taken aback. "Like, with me?"

Jamie just sort of looks at him for a few seconds. Even after a few years of doing this show together, it still makes him uncomfortable. "Sure," he says.

"Well, alright then, Hyneman, let's get to it."

-

The first thing Jamie learns is that, when the apocalypse comes, he is not picking Adam for his survivalist post-apocalyptic buddy.

"Okay, cuddling for warmth, take three," Adam whispers, crawling back into the sleeping back and squirming around. "This time with the thermometer."

"You're sure you didn't forget anything else?" Jamie asks, rolling his eyes. He grimaces as Adam shuffles and wiggles around, trying to get comfortable. He can almost feel the camera zooming in on his face to get his reaction shot.

"No, no, I got it this time, I promise," Adam huffs.

Jamie just grunts and settles in. "So this is the - "

"It's the control," Adam says hastily, and Jamie wonders how much squirming he'll be doing when they get to tomorrow's experiment, or the ones they have scheduled for tuesday night. Tonight it's flannel pajamas and socks.

"Yesterday was the control." Yesterday was kinda nice, lying together on the hard dirt ground, separate sleeping bags, with a gas lamp nearby for light. Like camping, except for the boom mics and Dave the assistant producer eating a donut nearby.

"Well, today is the other control."

"You have an interesting grasp of science," Jamie says slowly, and Adam squirms and rolls over. "You're gonna compromise the results, stop moving."

"How am I - "

"You're generating friction."

Adam sighs, long and theatrical. Jamie can almost feel the camera zooming in on Adam to get a shot of him rolling his eyes. He pulls the top hood of the double sleeping bag down over their heads, making a private little cocoon.

"Go to sleep, Hyneman."

Jamie closes his eyes and carefully relaxes his muscles, starting with his toes and working his way up to his head. Adam's arm is pressing against his, the only point of contact between them. He falls asleep fast, and doesn't dream.

-

Adam hops from foot to foot while Jamie takes his goddamned time getting into the sleeping bag.

"C'mon, move it, it's freezing out here!"

"Well, yeah, it's the Sierras in November, of course it's gonna be - "

Adam pushes on Jamie's bare back, urging him to go faster. Once Jamie's in, Adam wastes no time crawling in next to him, sighing as he zips them in tight.

"Cuddling for warmth, day three, naked," Jamie calls out to the cameras, the same way he calls out the experiment name when they're about to blow something up, or drop something really heavy from something really high. Adam has to laugh.

"I just want to point out for the viewers in case they edit the earlier section that we are actually wearing boxer shorts," he grins, leering at the camera. "So Jamie's precious virtue is protected."

Jamie sort of harrumphs in that way he does when he's fed up with Adam making fun of him. Adam curves his hands around Jamie's waist in retaliation. Jamie makes a satisfying yelp.

"What didja do, dip your hands in an, an ice pack before you got into the sleeping bag?"

"Yes, Jamie, it was my nightly ice pack dip ritual," Adam says. "Shut up, you're warm."

"That's the point of the exercise," Jamie agrees, and rolls to face him. Jamie's feet are cold but his chest and arms are radiating heat.

-

"I have to say, if you ever find yourself stuck in a cold climate where you're forced to spend the night without a source of heat, I do highly recommend the Hyneman Heating System. I don't know what it is about Jamie, like maybe he is actually a robot with his own nuclear power source, but the man is warm." Adam laughs, and Jack the camera guy chuckles in that silent professional way he has. "I don't know if the naked trial was better than the pajama trial, we'll have to look at the data for that, but definitely both nights together were better than the night alone."

-

"Yeah, I mean, probably if you're stuck somewhere cold it's better to share a sleeping bag if you can," Jamie says. "Survival is probably more important than not getting kicked in the shins all night long."

"Hey!" Adam calls, from off-camera. "I heard that."

-

"Okay, how do you wanna do this?" Adam asks, the next night, when they're back to the flannel pajamas.

"What, you want instructions for cuddling?"

"No, I just, where should I put my arm, and - "

Jamie interrupts by grabbing Adam around the midsection and hauling him into an embrace, sticking one knee between Adam's legs and holding him firm.

Adam's face is shoved into Jamie's chest hair where it's poking out of the pajama lapels.

"Jamie," he says, his voice coming out muffled, "you're crushing me somewhat with your manly embrace."

"Yeah, it's for science," Jamie says, not letting him go. "Deal with it."

Adam laughs, and when he hears Jamie's rare answering half-chuckle, it's somehow better because he can feel it rumble through Jamie's chest, has his ear pressed against the place it comes from.

-

Jamie doesn't go to sleep quite so quickly that night. Adam settles down pretty fast once Jamie shortcuts his nonsense and just grabs him up; before too long he's snoring and drooling on Jamie's neck. But Jamie finds himself lying awake for a little while.

He closes his eyes and starts to carefully relax his muscles, starting with his toes and working his way up to his head. Adam's touching him all along his body, ankles and calves, knees and chest, his arms wrapped loosely around Jamie's waist and his breath hot and a little stale in the air between them. Even in his sleep he's kind of squirmy, but Jamie finds to his surprise that he doesn't really mind.

For no particular reason, he finds himself thinking back on their first year doing the show, and back further to that year that Adam worked for M5, before he did ILM. How he'd been then, even more manic and impatient, taking up far more space than Jamie would've believed. How he'd broken the lathe and burned scars into the new wooden workbench and built beautiful things and how Jamie'd fired him, finally, relieved to get the guy off the property.

Adam's fingers twitch against Jamie's side, a dog chasing rabbits in a dream. Jamie relaxes the muscles of his arm, and lets it slip down around Adam's back, lets his palm rest against Adam's spine.

Maybe Adam wouldn't be such a bad post-apocalyptic survivalist buddy after all.

-

In the morning, Jamie wakes up first, but not by much; Adam's eyes struggle open not long after. The new flannel is itchy against Jamie's skin and they're pressed together, curled into each other. It's warm in the sleeping bag. The hood is still pulled down over the top flap of the bag, so it's dark and quiet. It doesn't sound like the crew is awake yet.

Jamie sees the exact moment when Adam realises that he's got his hand on Jamie's ass.

"You know, I'm not convinced that this is even a real myth," Jamie says. "I think you made it up just to cop a feel."

Adam's eyes go wide, and then he laughs. Before Jamie can do anything to respond to that, Adam's in motion, tightening his arms and pressing his face into Jamie's collarbone: a hug.

Jamie, bemused, hugs back, just a little.

When Adam pulls back, he's smiling. "Time to go see what the thermometer says?" he asks.

"Sure," Jamie agrees. Adam unzips the sleeping bag, and they crawl out together into the morning sunshine.


End file.
